1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a portable chiller for a liquid pharmaceutical preparation, cosmetic preparation, beverage or the like which is available in a comparatively small container.
2. Brief Description of the Prior Art
Portable chillers of this type are disclosed in Japanese Kokai Tokkyo Koho No. 51-85546 and Japanese Kokai Jituyo Shinan Koho No. 60-125479, among others.
These known chillers generally comprise a housing for accommodating an article to be chilled, a cylinder filled with a compressed liquid refrigerant, a nozzle communicable with said housing and cylinder and adapted to deliver said compressed liquid refrigerant into said housing and a valve operable to open and close said nozzle.
The working principle of these prior art chillers is that as an article to be chilled, which may for example be a handkerchief, a bottled drug or a canned beverage, is accommodated in the housing and the valve is opened, the compressed liquid refrigerant is ejected from the nozzle of the cylinder into the housing to chill the article by the heat of vaporization.
In these prior art chillers wherein the article is directly exposed to the gasified refrigerant, the consumption of the refrigerant is high and the cylinder must be changed with high frequency. This is not only troublesome but also uneconomical. These problems could be solved by increasing the capacity of the refrigerant cylinder but this practice would increase the whole bulk of the chiller to cause inconveniences in carrying.
Moreover, since the refrigerant impinges only on a limited surface, i.e. on the surface of the article that faces the nozzle, the cooling efficiency is inevitably low. This, in turn, means an increased consumption of the refrigerant to achieve the required chilling effect, amplifying the above-mentioned problems.